The Console War: A Soldier's Tale
by Bluebottlejr
Summary: War has been waged for many years, and the stakes have only started to rise ever higher than before. As hundreds of thousands of soldiers from across the four nations bloody the land in the name of those who lead them to the conflict, the CPUs, a lone country woman is forced into the army and discovers the hard way that war never changes, but people do through the roads they walk.
1. Prologue

**The Console War:** **A Soldier's Tale**

 **Prologue**

* * *

" _Know thyself, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories."_

― Sun Tzu, _The Art of War_

" _War does not determine who is right — only who is left."_

― Anonymous

" _Fortune, which has a great deal of power in other matters but especially in war, can bring about great changes in a situation through very slight forces."_

― Julius Caesar, _The Civil War_ , Book III, 68

" _There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others."_

― Niccolo Machiavelli, _The Prince_ , ch. 3 (1514)

 _"A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace."_

— Ecclesiastes 3:8, King James Version

 _"Who are you, that do not know your history?"_

— Ulysses, _Fallout: New Vegas_

" _Burn the heretic. Kill the mutant. Purge the unclean."_

— Imperium Thought for the Day _, Warhammer 40,000: Dawm of War_

" _After the thing went off… a scientist turned to Father and said, 'Science has now known sin.' And do you know what Father said? He said, 'What is sin?"_

— Kurt Vonnegut, _Cat's Cradle_

* * *

The bright sunshine was unrelenting in the late mid-morning heat as the sun crept up from the east over the hills, encasing all the land in its bright rays. The sky was bare of clouds, the wind was nowhere to be found or felt and the heat, while not unbearable, was still pretty hot to deal with. The two wanderers that were travelling across the landscape walked together side-by-side with alert gazes, passing by rocky formations that led straight to a large dark brown rock mountain range – or canyon depending on whom was asked – with a dangerous path climbing up a steep side of the cliff. A large mix of dead trees, uprooted tree trunks and semi-living trees littered the area around them in a mix of cohesive and outright messy formations.

One of the wanderers groaned out of exhaustion and sat down on a tree trunk that laid upon the dirt-covered ground, a wide and outstretched piece of rock around twenty-odd feet that was shaped in a half upside down 'U' shape above the sitting wanderer acted as a piece of shade against the sun's rays. He appeared to be worn out and feeling under the weather due to the summer heat. The wanderer wiped his forehead, unbuttoned his red shirt and black sleeveless vest, and pulled out a bottle of water from a satchel that hanged by his left waist, then opened it and took a long swig of water. A deep sigh of relief soon followed after, along with a deep primal noise that sounded as if he wanted more of the cold liquid.

"Ahhh, that hit the spot," the worn out wanderer sighed before brushing aside his black cowlick out of his eye vision. "How much further until we get to our destination, Gareth?"

Gareth, the other wanderer, straightened the steel riveted leather pauldron that was strapped to his left shoulder before looking over at his travelling companion to give him an answer. "Well, we took the wrong path about an hour ago, so that had us go in the opposite direction, which then led us here - the middle of damn nowhere. Never thought Virtua Forest would be so big and confusing to venture through."

"So how frigging long before we get to the hot spot where all the loot is?" the black haired man asked again, this time with a more serious tone. "I don't want to spend all day searching for that pre-war loot and not find anything. You remember what happened along Route 13 near the ruins of that village."

The other wanderer by the name of Gareth grumbled something to himself, to which his travelling companion did not seem to pick up all that well, then proceeded to speak with a snarky tone of his own. "Look, I don't know how long it'll take to find the salvage site, so stop your whining already and get ready to keep moving. We're going to try and see if the pre-war salvage is up on the plains above that cliff face. There's a path that leads up there, though it's kinda steep and dangerous. Want to brave it?"

"Do we have a choice now? If we want that damn loot then we have to get to the location by any means necessary, even if we have to try and walk - or climb or something - up some rocky path," was the response Gareth received from his worn out travelling companion as he readjusted his . The worn out man went back to drinking from his water bottle, leaving his companion to access the way up the cliff.

Gareth wiped the sweat off his forehead and moved out of the shaded area to take a closer look at the path up the cliff, wondering if it was even possible to use the path that was nearby to get to the top. At first it seemed almost impossible due to how much rubble was in the way and how steep the thin road upwards was. The wanderer grumbled to himself about the path as he walked towards it. "Let's hope that there's a way up it, we need that Console War era loot so we can pay off our debtors. Damn that map to the Graveyard for misleading us here."

The wanderer scratched the back of his blue haired head as he approached the path, his eyes gazing over the start of the road, seeing the open pathway that led up the steep road covered with fallen rocks, collapsed pathway areas, the odd few bushes growing out of crevices and even a tree that had fallen down from the flat grassfield above the mountain range cliff. The path looked more hazardous up close and personal, especially around the middle area of the path, which steeped further upward and would essentially have to be climbed before they even got to three quarters up the way. By that point things looked easier, but it was the rest of the path that was on the wanderer's mind.

"Tch. How the hell are we going to deal with all that rubble and shit in the way? Ah crap, this is going to take _ages_ to get over," the blue haired man grumbled as he shook his head, not knowing how to get around the problem facing him and his friend. There were a few options when it came to some of the more moveable rubble along the pathway, but some of the more heavier rubble, aka the boulders and tree trunk, would require some intense climbing. It almost looked impossible to cross over, but the mere thought of loot from the Console War would be enough of a stimulus to get him and his companion over the top.

"Ghhh. We can do it, we can do it," the blue haired man muttered as he wiped his forehead, removing the sweat that was there and proceeded to take a large swig of water out of his canteen, savouring the cool taste of water that passed his lips. He sighed in a deep, almost guttural noise after drinking the water. "Ahh, that's a lot better. Now, time to convince Jonathan to follow me up the damn mountain path. The sooner the better."

When Gareth returned to the small 'shelter' he saw Jonathan leaning up against the cliff wall that was protected by the shade, apparently finding the shade to be more than relaxing upon first discovering it. While it seemed enticing, the lure of valuable loot drove the blue haired wanderer onward. "Come on, we gotta get a move on now, that loot isn't going to be found on its own you know."

"Ergh. Five more minutes, man - this shade is just too good to leave," Jonathan responded, sighing with relief as he continued to lay against the cliff face, not wanting to get up or even move for that matter. He appeared to be somewhat enjoying the shade a bit too much in Gareth's unimpressed eyes.

"No, we need to move now, otherwise who knows what other prospectors might come along to find the loot before us - we _need_ the money," the blue haired man responded sternly as he grabbed a hold of Jonathan's left shoulder, hauling him up onto his feet and pushing him back out into the open, much to his displeasure. "Now come on, we've gotta get up that path. You still have some water left, right?"

The black haired wanderer nodded. "Yeah, yeah, I still have some water left, even some Nowa Cola I got off some traders from the east. And no, you aren't getting any - this is mine."

The blue haired man seemed a bit surprised to hear about his wandering companion having some Nowa Cola, which was basically an almost foreign soft drink - or soda pop depending on where one was brought up. Gareth longed to drink some ice-cold Nowa Cola, but his constant debts proved to be the bane of that dream. He sighed and shook his head, keeping his thoughts to himself, although it was difficult to actually hide his longing for the Nowa Cola, the black haired wanderer could easily tell. Now Gareth had to watch out not only for other prospectors and the random monster, but also his travelling companion too. It was something to keep his mind distracted from the heat at least, aside from what they were going to do next: ascend the pathway to the top of the mountain range.

"Whatever, let's just get going already. I want to be up there before mid-day arrives. Come on," the blue haired man said as he beckoned Jonathan to follow him before walking in the direction of the cliff pathway, the black haired wanderer in close tow behind him with a look of despair upon his face.

When the two man group arrived at the very beginning of the dangerous pathway up the side of the cliff; the way up seemed more daunting that first seen. Jonathan looked over at his travelling companion with an expression that read of fear and anxiety, making it clear how he was currently feeling at that moment. They both stared at each other for a few seconds before finally giving in and started to walk up the path.

The wanderers treaded carefully as they ascended up the path as it became steeper the more they walked up it, and they were right to do so, for the path was much more narrow than first believed, and pieces of it were not entirely stable either. The latter became evident when Gareth almost lost his footing as the ground beneath it crumbled away, causing the blue haired wanderer to almost fall off back down to the ground. The fall would not have killed him due to his position upon the pathway, but serious injuries would have been sustained nonetheless.

Gareth gasped for air as he clung to the rocky cliff wall tightly as he looked down at where had once been a solid, smooth area where his left foot had previously been - it shook him greatly as he tried to calm his already shoddy nerves. "Okay, okay, it's fine now, just a little mishap, we can still do this. Come on, we're not even halfway there yet, and that's where things start to get _really_ bloody difficult."

"What do you mean 'really bloody difficult'? This is already fucking difficult for crying out loud!" the black haired man yelled back in an enraged tone as they clung onto a large piece of outstretched rock, his eyes wide open.

"You think I don't know that already?! Oh shit, there's some wind coming in now. Wish we bought sunglasses or goggles with us," the blue haired man grumbled as a sudden gust of wind came brushing up against them, kicking up loose small pebbles that littered the area around them. The wanderer sheltered his face with his left arm, as did Jonathan too.

"Screw this shit, I'd rather deal with the debtors now than put up with risking our lives for some old Console War loot in the middle of fucking nowhere!" Jonathan shouted as he and Gareth continued on their way as cautiously as they could, especially since the more dangerous part of the pathway was just up ahead. It seemed that his black haired friend was inclined to agree, but they were already neck-deep in their current situation to change that.

The two wanderers had been attempting to ascend the mountain pathway for around fifteen to twenty minutes, some of which was spent trying to regain their breath and their nerves, but now Gareth - who seemed to be the brains of the two - looked on towards the middle of the path and saw how steep in an upward state it got from there. He sighed in a grumbling manner and continued onward, silently wishing he was back on the road and not in debt for once in his life, or climbing up steep rocky paths for that matter too.

About another fifteen minutes later Gareth and Jonathan got to the area of the path where the large fallen tree had made its home, passing by several bushes, small boulders and collapsed areas along the way. The ground beneath the tree appeared solid, although by this point Gareth knew not to trust appearances, even if it was not a first glance at it. The two men took a quick look at each other, nodded their heads and proceeded to carefully go forth.

What looked like a somewhat difficult obstacle turned out to be much more troublesome, and dangerous, than first realised. As it turned out, things were not quite as stable as the two wanderers were led to believe. The tree trunk that stretched out over the path began to creek and groan as Gareth climbed over it, causing him to stop suddenly and look down at the fallen tree trunk he was currently passing over, his eyes lit alight with fright. After a few minutes of silent waiting the blue haired man came to the conclusion that nothing more was going to happen, so he continued onward as carefully as they can, which proved more difficult than before.

"Shit, that was too close for comfort," Gareth muttered as he finished crossing over the tree trunk and collapsed onto the less than smooth path.

As he breathed in and out deeply the blue haired wanderer heard something, or someone, further up along the rocky pathway, when suddenly some dirt and small rocks tumbled down the cliff face. Gareth spun his head around and look upwards to see if there was somebody up there, and believed he saw that there was indeed somebody further up along the path as he saw some quick movement. Whoever was up there swiftly disappeared though, leaving only an image of a person's head covered with a helmet and some sort of object covering their face. It left confusing questions in the wanderer's mind.

"What the... Wh-Who's up there? Hey! Is there somebody up there?" Gareth called out loudly, his eyes darting about from area to area above him, only to see nor hear anything out of the ordinary. It was both frustrating and disturbing for him.

His companion, who had just finished drinking the last of the water in his canteen, looked over to the blue haired man and stared at him with narrowed eyes. "What are you complaining about this time? Saw another giant rat or something? Did it try to talk to you?"

"No, it isn't anything like that at all! There was somebody up there – another human," Gareth tried to explain as he pointed upwards to the top of the cliff face where the path ended, but there was nothing of interest to see up there.

The response he got from his travelling companion show how much he did not believe him. "Are you certain you saw somebody up there? You sure it wasn't just some wild imagination again? Got the Nowa Shakes happening again?"

"I'm serious here! There's somebody, or at the very least something up there spying on us. Trust me on this one at least, come on," the black haired man retorted grumpily, but soon after gave up when it became obvious that Jonathan was not going to believe him any time soon no matter what the black haired man would say.

Nevertheless, it was now Jonathan's turn to cross over the trunk. Easier said than done. The black haired man grumbled to himself, saying some sort of prayer or something of the kind under his muttering breath, then proceeded to carefully go forth onto the tree trunk. It did not go of to a good start. The trunk croaked once again as Jonathan began to cross over it, this time more violently than before, and more dangerously too. The two men glanced over at each other for a split moment as Jonathan stopped moving, his expression lit alight with uncertainty as the trunk kept groaning underneath him. He was not exactly a heavy person, but he had a bit more weight to him than the average person who lived in the territories near Virtua Forest.

"Oh for the love of the heavens..." the blue haired man grumbled for a short moment as the tree trunk beneath him continued to groan and crack, then without much further warning it split in two, revealing a hollow inside that looked as of it had been breaking under the effects of the weather for goodness knows how many years.

The sudden collapse of the unstable structure sent the black haired man tumbling downward, only to have his left hand caught by his companion, but it was not enough to stop the fall completely. Gareth yelped in shock as he too fell down after swooping in to try and save his comrade, his face scraping against the cliff face as his left hand grabbed hold of a small yet firm piece of rock. He gritted his teeth tightly as a panicked expression lit up upon his face and thoughts of death cluttered his mind.

"Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit!" Gareth yelled in abject fear as he gripped the stone tightly while keeping a hold on Jonathan's left hand. The blue haired man looked upward to see if it was still possible to climb back up, and much to his relief there was indeed a way up, in fact they had not fallen too far down at all, instead it seemed they had only fallen down a few feet.

However, there was a slight problem with the mere idea of even attempting to climb back up to the cliff-side pathway: Jonathan was slipping and Gareth was losing his grip ever so slightly, not to mention that he had no free hands left. Without much of a second thought, the blue haired man looked down at the man struggling to hold onto his right and barked an order at him, his tone being filled with stress and panic.

"Let go of my hand and grab onto my leg. Do it!" Gareth demanded in a rush as his left fingers did their best to tighten their grip on the outstretched stone.

"Which leg?" was the confused response that the black haired, Nowa Cola addict man gave, which infuriated his companion to no end at that specific moment in time.

Gareth merely looked back down and snarled at him in a fit of anger. "I don't give a flying fuck which leg you choose, just grab hold of one already you useless son of a bastard's bastard's bastard! I gotta have that hand free to get us out of this mess!"

"Tch. Fine, just watch your mouth next time, or else," Jonathan muttered in a dangerous tone before he carefully grabbed a hold of his travelling companion's right leg, moving from hand to leg swiftly afterwards.

It brought about a small sense of relief for Gareth, but it was to be short lived when he suddenly lost hold of his grip for a very short moment and slipped downward before re-catching hold of the rock, this time with two hands. The plan, it appeared, was not going according to plan at all. The two men merely dangled there for the next thirty seconds, neither of them moving their limbs about nor their heads, both fearing that even the slightest bit of movement from them would cause some sort of chain reaction that would lead to their deaths. It was not until a full minute had finally passed that Gareth opened his eyes and looked up to see his fingers slipping once more.

With a heavy sigh of defeat, the blue haired man looked downward and stared at Jonathan, his expression turning grim as he mentally prepared himself for his fate. "Well, been nice knowing ya. At least we won't be in debt now."

Surprisingly, this dark humour managed to make Jonathan chuckle right before he brushed aside his black hair that fluttered around his forehead. "Heh, true that. Still, would've preferred to die with a gun in my hands instead of this stupidity we got ourselves in."

Gareth seemed to agree with this, but there was little that could be done. Within moments his grip on the rock slipped, despite the attempts he made to grab hold of another rock to steady himself with, and began to plummet down to the earth below. Only something happened that he had not expected, for he had not managed to hear anything nor remember what he had seen back at the tree trunk. Something, or rather someone, grabbed a hold of his right hand and somehow steadied themselves to not fall off with them into the abyss below.

The blue haired man, shocked that his descent downward had been stopped, opened his eyes once more and looked up, see somebody that he had forgotten about many minutes ago. It was a person, a human, much like the one the leather-clad man had seen higher up on the pathway after he had finished crossing over the collapsed tree trunk. They were wearing a dark grey army helmet with some sort of small light attached to the left side of it, a red bandana around their lower face and a pair of welding goggles in front of their eyes. Aside from that it was difficult to tell anything else about them, mainly because of the sun, but it was clear from the person's right arm that they were wearing some sort of duster coat outfit with long sleeves and leather gloves.

"Hold on tight, I'm pulling you two up as best I can here. Stop flailing about and this'll be easier, also grab hold of any firm rock you can see to pull yourselves up – can't do this on my own," the mysterious figure called out to them, which was when both travellers realised that their saviour was a woman, a young one to be precise.

The two dangling men were eventually pulled back up onto the path, although it took quite some effort on both ends to get back onto the more stable area of the path, which took about a few minutes at least and almost broke the firm piece of outstretched tree root that stuck out of the side of the cliff behind her. The three of them collapsed onto the rocky path, panting for air like a pair of oversized runners who heard a rumour about some fried chicken down the street.

At the very least it gave the blue haired man a moment to take a look at their saviour. She was indeed wearing a duster coat, but it was different to the ones he had seen in the old war-time posters. This coat was made of a mix between leather and a dimmed light coloured cloth, there were several stitches around the top of the sleeves and there was a few pockets here and there. Aside from that she also wore weather-worn blue jeans with some tearing around the upper left leg and a pair of light brown comabt boots. A semi-automatic rifle was strapped to her back and some sort of handgun was resting in a holster strapped to her left waist. It was an odd look to say the least, especially in the current weather the canyon was experiencing.

None of the three uttered a single word to each other until Jonathan, who had just wiped the sweat off his forehead, took a double glance at the young woman, widened his eyes and his right hand went straight for the 10mm pistol that was resting in a holster attached to his right leg. He never actually grabbed the gun, but he seemed ready to do so given the chance he overly disliked the newcomer who had just saved them. "Wh-who are you?! Why're you here? Do we owe you money? Well?!"

The young woman merely stared at him, seemingly confused with his current action and what he was asking. All that came out of her was some confused mumbling and a prolonged gaze. Eventually she looked over to the blue haired man and tilted her head slightly before speaking to him. "Is your friend always like this, asking questions with wild abandon with a gun near him?"

"Only to strangers who come out of nowhere," Gareth responded as he got back onto his feet, then proceeded to extend a hand towards the young woman, who looked at him without uttering a word or moving at all. She seemed a bit confused at first, but soon took a hold of the hand and was pulled back up onto her feet.

"Uh, thanks for that," the young woman said as she dusted herself off. After a moment of self cleaning she looked back at the two men, who were now standing next to each other with their eyes firmly on her – it was concerning to say the least. "So... what's your names? You have names, right?"

"Of course we have names!" the blue haired man responded in a less than savoury tone, which he quickly rectified after coughing into his fist a moment later. "Feels a bit late for introductions, but better late than never I suppose. I'm Gareth and this here is Jonathan. We're... prospectors, of sorts. And you are?"

The duster coat-wearing woman hummed to herself for a few seconds, as if she was coming up with some sort of answer to the simple question. Soon enough she answered it. "You two can call me Sam."

"Sam? Is that some sort of nickname, or did your parents preferred to have a boy instead of a girl?" the black haired man asked with a raised eyebrow, sniggering at his own little joke, although whether the young woman took it as a joke was something he had not stopped to consider at all.

Sam, if that was indeed her real name, did not seem to take offence to the black haired man's words, but neither did she take it as a joke. Instead she simply sighed, shook her head and spoke. "It's just a nickname I go by, and that's all you two need to know about me right now. Anyway, why were you two trying to climb up this shitty path? You two looking for something, perhaps some old loot? If so then it would've been safer to go around the long way via the east then northward, then west around the canyon. Would take longer to get to the top, but it would have been much, much more safer."

"Heh. Yeah, that would've been a better plan than this, but we got lost since the map was, to but it bluntly, absolute shit. Should have just used my brain instead of badly drawn geographical images," Gareth responded, agreeing with Sam fully.

Even the Nowa Cola loving man nodded in agreement. It looked as if he was a little more easy around the young woman now that introductions were out of the way. "We're after some stuff from the Console War, apparently there's a whole stash of goodies up there that's worth a lot of money, and we need it."

"Let me guess: you're doing this looting because you two are in debt. Am I right?" Sam asked as she crossed her arms and glanced at the two men, switching between the two every few seconds as she waited for an answer. When Gareth and Jonathan looked over at each other with grim expressions, Sam merely chuckled. "Heh, I knew it, you two are in debt. Unfortunately for you lot, there isn't much up there, just some rusty ammunition crates, which may or may not have already been looted over the years, and the remains of some old artillery cannon. You're welcome to take a closer look though, might have missed something that I didn't see."

The blue haired man gazed at Sam with narrowed eyes, appearing less welcoming than before. "So what are _you_ here for? Trying to take away the loot that you say isn't there?"

"Yes and no," was her initial response, but it became clear that she needed to explain it in further detail when both men appeared confused at stared at her with questioning gazes. Sam muttered something almost silently to herself before elaborating on her response. "Okay, well, yes I am looking for somthing but no it isn't the same as what you two are after. Is that clear now?"

Jonathan still seemed a little suspicious, as if he still did not have a proper answer, but overall he appeared somewhat fine with the young woman. His mildly leather-clad travelling companion seemed to share the same thought. "Well, all right then, I guess I understand that. What're you after though?"

"Something important that's going to help me with my search. I hope so anyway," Sam replied, her voice dimming down as she almost finished speaking. It sounded as if it was a personal matter to her, not one to be talked about with near looked back up the cliff and stared at the end of the pathway, sighing soon afterwards before glancing back towards the two men. "Look, I gotta get back up there. I suppose you two are coming as well? We'll be going the same way."

The black haired man looked up to where Sam had gazed at for a few seconds, glancing at the end of the pathway for a moment before looking abck at the young woman. "I suppose we might as well tag along with you, we'll be going on the same path as you said. Lead the way."

Sam nodded, saying nothing as she began to carefully walk up the pathway, followed slowly by Gareth and Jonathan close behind her. She led them up the path, passing by fallen boulders and even a few tree roots that stuck out of the cliff face in a mixture of jagged ways, there was also a few holes in the ground and scars from the Console War could be seen along the cliff; a battle had been fought here a long time ago. The tree helped each other when it was required of them to do so, mainly it involved them helping each other over holes, outstretched tree roots and any other obstacles in their ways.

There were a few close calls here and there, but after about ten minutes of carefully traversing up the path until they finally reached the end of the path, the top of the cliff. Gareth grabbed hold of a large piece of tall rock and pulled himself up onto the surprisingly grassy field, finally leaving the tripsy path behind him. He sighed a deep breath of relief and took a quick glance around him, seeing what the area they found themselves in looked like.

In comparison to where they had originally been a few seconds ago, the place atop the canyon mountain cliff was rather bright and colourful, mostly being green due to the grass and even a few living trees and overgrown bushes, although there were some areas where everything looked completely dead, although these areas were closer to the edges of the cliff barring a few craters that were further away, where Sam was walking towards. It appeared as if the hidden loot was over there. The two men, after regaining their breath, took a look at each other, nodded and followed after the young woman, who had already gained a large lead ahead of them.

"Come on, we've got some loot to take back with us," the black haired man said to his travelling companion, who nodded in response before the two quickly followed after Sam, passing by a bunch of overgrown bushes and vines growing across rock faces.

As they walked across the field, passing the rocks and taller areas of the mountain, their breath being taken away when the two men gazed out over the canyon below. It was oddly beautiful to look upon. Gareth sighed deeply, finding the view breath taking as his eyes gazed from area to area, watching the trees sway about in the wind and a river in the far distance glittering in the bright sunlight. The blue haired man glanced over at his travelling companion, appearing more at peace rather than exhausted.

"You know, after seeing all of this, I kinda feel... well, peaceful. Weird, isn't it?" the leather-clad man said, his eyes turning back to the view of the canyon below them.

Jonathan raised an eyebrow, seemingly not believing him for a moment, but even he finally appeared somewhat distant and peaceful. "I suppose I know what you mean. Isn't everyday you see something like this."

Gareth nodded, sighing deeply moments later. "True that. Still, we should get a move on with what we originally came here for. C'mon, let's get moving, don't want this Sam person to take anything of value away from us before we've even taken a look at it."

The black haired man nodded firmly and quickly followed his companion to where the young woman had disappeared to, which was several minutes away from where the two men had stopped to gaze over the land below. Gareth and Jonathan finally found the war scarred area where the loot was supposed to be found, seeing Sam bending down on one knee next to a large, tall rock covered in overgrown vines, a small rusty container resting on her raised knee as she rummaged through it. From what the blue haired man was able to see as he passed her in the direction of a rusty, half destroyed artillery cannon with several ammunition containers laying about in a disorderly manner. If there was anything of valuable in the area it would be around or near the artillery cannon.

Gareth and Jonathan rested underneath the shade of the tall mountain rock and swiftly began to rummage around the ammunition containers and the few wooden boxes that littered the area near the artillery piece, hoping to find something of value to take back and sell for whatever price they were worth. Unfortunately for the two prospectors, it seemed that Sam was right all along, for there was not much to look at save for some cases of unused ammo that belonged to some sort of rifle, a couple of artillery shells, empty biscuit tins and spam tins too. Overall it was not much, but the ammunition would sell for a small price to the right people at the very least, which was of some comfort to the two men.

"Ugh. Wish there was more here to loot," the black haired man grumbled as he sat down on the ground and leaned up against the rock formation behind him, wiping the sweat off his forehead. It was safe to assume that he was less impressed with what they found than his companion was.

"We'll take what we can get. Everything counts towards us getting out of debt," the man with the shoulder-pad on his left arm responded, his eyes darting towards the black haired with a stern look to them. "Besides, there are plenty of people out there who would charge a lot of ammo, especially artillery shells such as these babies 'ere."

Jonathan shrugged, being somewhat dismisive it would seem, but it looked as if he agreed with the blue haired man. "Yeah, guess you're right about that. Still, it isn't going to cover our debt, plus getting these shells back down to the lowlands."

It was then that Sam walked over to them, rusted tin contianer in hand; she had listened to the entire conversation. It was difficult to tell just what the young woman was thinking, or how she actually felt at all, but from how she sounded when talking, it was apparent that Sam was not all too pleased. "Selling artillery shells? What, are you trying to incite an armed conflict or something around here?"

Gareth raised an eyebrow as he stared grimly at Sam, resolute on his decision. "Look, we need the money, and I honestly don't care who gets the shells afterwards. Besides, it's not as if Gamindustri is in a complete period of peace you know. Self defence is still a thing, if you haven't forgotten."

"No, I haven't forgotten, but give weapons to the wrong people and you'll have a bloodbath on your hands. Do you want _that_ on your conscisnous for the rest of your days?" she asked in a harsh tone, her eyes narrowing in the blue haired man's direction, although it was difficult to tell with the welding goggles she wore. The young woman seemed to take offence to anything that could lead to mass destruction, which on the outset seemed reasonable to say the least.

The two men merely gazed over at each other, giving a look that read of uninterest in what Sam's opinion towards the idea of selling artillery shells to random people who may or may not be morally correct in her world view, although just what her world view happened to be unknown. Gareth looked back at the young woman and and nodded slightly. "Uh huh, okay then, if you say so. We'll keep it in mind once we get it all back down to the lowlands. Now, speaking of the lowlands and money, we gotta move all this stuff."

The black haired man nodded, seemingly eager to get back to wherever he originally came from, taking all the valuable loot with him. "Yeah, we better get moving, we need that money. C'mon."

As Jonathan stood up, ready to start moving the ammunition crates, both men heard Sam couch into her right fist, gaining their attention pretty quickly. "Ahem! Um, guys, I don't want to dampen your dreams or anything, but I honestly don't think you're going to get all of this ammo and crap back down to the lowlands before night sets in, then come the monsters. You're better off staying put until the early morning, if you want my opinion."

The two travellers glanced over at Sam, then each other, and finally to the sky above them, only to see the evening sky and the sun starting to set over the western horizon. It sure looked like it was getting late, and neither men wanted to be out in the wilderness in the middle of the night, hauling large artillery shells in the dark when monsters could very well be nearby – it left an uneasy feeling in their hearts. The blue haired man sighed, shook his head and glanced back at Sam, who was fiddling around with some sort of small holotape.

"Fine then, guess we should stay put until the morning comes up again; hate to think about doing this for hours upon hours of end without break before getting ambushed," Gareth said in response to Sam's suggestion, finding some sage advice in her words. "Besides, we need a long break after getting up that damn cliff face pathway."

The group seemed to be in agreement, even Jonathan was, despite being hte one who really wanted to get back to the lowlands and sell all that they had found. With this agreement the three decided to do their best to set up a camp with the limited supplies and equipment at their disposal, which proved to be a little difficult considering that only Sam had camping equipment, but it was only enough for one person, aside form the food of course, to which everybody contributed. By the time the moon had started to rise higher into the sky, the group had set up a campfire, the only bedroll available – which Sam had carried alongside her backpack, which was left behind when she went to check out Gareth and Jonathan's predicament – and the group had started to roast a few pieces of food they had brought with them.

Overall it was not the most impressive camp, but it was going to be useful until the sun rose again in the morning. The three sat aroudn the campfire, each doing their own thing. Gareth comped away at some pieces of roasted meat, Jonathan was stitching up his left trouser leg, which he had torn when almost falling off the cliff, and Sam was looking over an old piece of paper alongside the iliac-coloured holotape, which she soon placed in a pocket and proceeded to pick up a penicl. It seemed the young woman was studying the old paper and drawing some diagrams on it. It caught the black haired man's interest.

"Hey, what's that you've got, a map or something?" he asked the young woman once he stopped stitching up his trouser leg, his eyes darting over to the piece of paper in her hands.

Sam glanced over the young scruffy haired man, seemingly surprised at first. "Huh? Oh, this? Yeah, kind of. It's more like notes, with a map here and there. The holotape is more important, since the notes say it's a map of old science facilities and military compounds from the time of the Console War."

"You a prospector after all then?" Gareth chipped in as he continued to munch away at his light meal.

"No, not really, just more of an wanderer who's looking to piece together holes in a patchy past," the young woman responded, her words becoming more grim the more she spoke. Sam sighed and placed the old paper in the pocket she put the holotape in a few moments ago, same with her pencil. This brought on several minutes of silence between the three.

After a little while of silence within the group, barring the occasional munching, slight coughing, fire crackling and rock throwing, Gareth had finished off his meal and belched into his left fist, apologising soon after. The black haired man chuckled slightly to himself and readjusted the collar of his vest. "Well, I guess none of us are going to get to sleep any time soon. Does anybody know any games we could amuse ourselves with, or maybe a story or two?"

The young woman seemed to perk up a bit, as was evident when her gaze fell upon the black haired man, and by the sound of her voice, which sounded more upbeat than before. "As a matter of fact, I do know a story that might interest the two of you. It's a true story, and it has effected the very world we all live in today. Want to hear it? It's going to take a long time to finish it."

The two travelling prospectors glanced over at each other, one shrugged their shoulders while the other simply nodded, then looked back at Sam, agreeing to listen to the story since they had nothing better to do. With an affirmative nod, Sam pushed up her goggles to reveal her eyes, then proceeded to pull out an old, weather-worn book out of her coat, opened it and began to read the first chapter. The title read: 'The Console War: A Soldier's Tale'.

* * *

 **A/N: So, here it is, the revamped version of A Soldier's Tale, now with a more elaborate title to boot. There isn't much I have to say, so this is going to be pretty short. There will be some differences between this version and the old, although the main plot will still be the same nonetheless, that's why I decided to get rid of the old chapters instead of creating a new story entirely. This has taken me a long time to complete, so progress will be slow every now and then, but this story is something I have always wanted to get back to since, well, I like the idea of an alternative dimension where the Console War took a much darker path in comparison to what we got in the games. Advice is welcome if you have any to share. Anyway, thanks for reading and have a good day if possible.  
**


	2. The Beginning of a Soldier

**Chapter 1: The Beginning of a Soldier**

Many who live in Gamindustri have heard of the Multiverse Theory, which states that there are many – perhaps hundreds of thousands – of various timelines, dimensions and universes connected together, branching out down their own path yet all sharing some sort of similar resemblance to each other. Some dimensions have seen pure peace and harmony, others have suffered through violence and disorder – none more so than one particular dimension where war had become the very thing that defined it.

In this dimension there is an old saying, one that is deeply rooted in its long history: war never changes. Many have used this phrase for different purposes, but all agree that through the worst violent impulses of humankind war never changes. Since the beginning of humankind, the ever present power of destruction wielded by those very same humans grew, first through rocks and sticks, to the invention of bronze, then to steel, and finally gunpowder.

From destruction grew war, first between the individual people, then to nations, until finally even the heavens themselves resounded with the ever present sound of blood being shed. Created from the power of faith, the divine material known as Sharicite manifested, soon birthing what would become later known as the Goddesses, the CPUs of this blight and bloodied world.

These divine beings were meant to guide humanity into an age of peace and prosperity, to weed out the destructive aspects of humanity, and perhaps even replace it with the intention to do good for the world instead of using it as a battleground to settle their ideological and political differences. For the first few centuries this divine guidance apparently seemed to work, but eventually, even the divine holy power of the goddesses was slowly becoming corrupted by the sheer bloodlust of their protectorates the more the two races spent time together. The cure to humanity's problems had slowly begun to be the very thing they had set out to destroy, an ironic twist of events to be sure.

However, much to the relief of many people who had gone out of touch with their destructive instincts, peace reigned thanks to the friendship between the four Goddesses of Gamindustri. Uranus of Planeptune, Minerva of Lastation, Venus of Leanbox and Bellona of Lowee. For centuries these four guided the masses, doing their best to keep the peace.

But peace had a price. The four Goddesses were not the first of their kind, for Gamindustri had spawned several other divine beings over the course of its history, and some had been forgotten, for good reasons. One of these was a fallen goddess of a sort, who had been called the Deity of Sin. The battle between the Deity of Sin, Uranus, Minerva, Venus and Bellona was drawn out and catastrophic, for only Uranus returned alive. However, she quickly died of her wounds some time later.

By the time the modern goddesses were born Gamindustri was already in a dark period, for unrest grew in every corner of the world. From the frozen tundras of the north to the warm green pastures of the south, trouble reigned. Then came the power of uranium, which many knew could cause even more trouble if in the wrong hands. When the new goddesses were born from the faith of the people they immediately set to work with keeping the peace.

At the very least one or two did anyway, for it turned out that the personalities of all four new CPUs - Console Patron Units - clashed together, especially when they transformed into their HDD - Hard Drive Divinity - forms. After several years arguing and bashing heads together it seemed that only a miracle could work if the Goddesses were to keep the peace with each other. But there was to be no miracle. Eventually their arguments escalated as each meeting between the four of them grew more and more sour, until something happened, something terrible. War. The Console War. The Dark Times had come to Gamindustri.

No one could remember how the Console War truly broke out, who really started it, or why it was truly being fought. Some say it was White Heart of Lowee who began the war by attacking Planeptune and Lastation with her dangerous and anger-filled northerners advancing across the borders, others say it was Black Heart and her technologically advanced country of Lastation who landed the first blow by launching an airstrike on Planeptunian towns and a swift blitzkrieg into Leanbox, then there was the rumours of Planeptune starting it by striking a surprise attack in all directions, as was the same with Leanbox with their navy and advanced infantry regiments. It mattered little to most who just wanted to continue living peacefully and not be troubled by the horrors of war.

Then there was the whole reason for the war. Some said it was simply because of petty arguments between the CPUs; others said that it was because of resources and territory issues; then there was the matter of Shares, the faith of individual citizens that powered the Goddesses - the latter appeared to be more plausible in some cases, but if that was indeed the case then it was one hell of a worthless war. There was one more possibility, and that was the title of True Goddess. It was a title that had been given to the very first CPU that ruled most of Gamindustri as a single nation, so the very idea of being the successor to the True Goddess would incite any CPU.

The war had been ongoing for decades, slowly draining resources, ending lives and families, bringing people to the point of madness and depression, blurring the lines of traditional borders by the constant back and forth conquests, and towns were forced into different nations as their land became conquered by rampaging Goddesses and their armies. It was a seriously dark time for those that lived near the front lines or anywhere near the constant fighting. Overall it did not paint the CPUs in a favourable light, to some people at least - there were still many who saw the CPUs as their saviours and guides to a better tomorrow.

As a whole, no one truly knew all the facts regarding the war, nor did anyone really care, all that mattered for many who lived near danger was surviving for another day. Yet despite all that was going on in the world, the capital cities of the four nations remained the same as they ever had, in relative peace; even parts of the countryside remained unaffected by the destructive war that was being fought on the frontlines. It is from one of these pastoral communities that a new soldier was to be conscripted. Yet little did they know what an impact this person was to have on the titanic war, and the world as a whole, in the future. Even if that future was nothing more than a smoldering ruin of fire, radiation, mutation, despair and death.

* * *

My fingers moved around the various buttons on the green controller in my hands, my eyes were practically glued to the television screen not far in front of me, the game me and my online friends were playing was what we were giving all of our attention to. I gritted my teeth and growled with annoyance as myself and my team were finally annihilated in the dark, grim dungeon. When the 'Mission Failed' screen appeared before me I felt anger and frustration, and I made my teammates know this quite clearly.

"What the hell happened there?! You were supposed to be watching my back, Crimson Fucker!" I yelled down the small, extended microphone that was attached to the left headphone.

"Oi! Don't blame me - you were supposed to be covering us with your healing magic, not trying to burn the undead into a crisp and run out of mana thanks to your overuse of restoration magic!" a deep and disgruntled manly voice responded from the other end of the voice chat. "Learn how to be a part of a proper team before trying to do a whole lot of dangerous stuff next time!"

"Ah shut it, you can't even hold yourself together in a serious fight, like with that level sixty boss a while back in 'The Forgotten Cave. You're incompetent when it comes to teamwork for Celestia's sake," I retorted back in a snarky voice, my eyes narrowing at his in-game character after we all respawned in the middle of the town. I knew he could not actually see me glaring at him, but it just came out naturally and was kind of out of my control.

I heard the young man scoff at my comment, which naturally made me grumble in a low tone of voice as he began to properly respond to me. Wish he never had to be honest, since I found his voice to be less than pleseant to listen to. "Says you! What use have you been for the team then, huh? Let's hear it!"

All of a sudden I heard an audible cough from another one of the players, who sounded like a female with a smooth and mature tone, was the one who broke up the escalating argument between me and the one everyone called the Crimson Fucker - it was his online name, so everyone, including me, had to call him by that. "My, my, Crimson Fucker, I keep telling you about that temper you have and to keep it under control. I swear, you're just like the Loweeans with that frustration."

From what I could hear it sounded as if the Crimson Fucker was deeply annoyed with what the mature woman, whom we all called Enternal_Flame67, and he made his thought very clear. "Hey, you take that back! I'm not like those backwards northerners! I can at least fight!"

"Yeah, yeah, you keep telling yourself that, my dear witch-hunting friend," the haughty-sounding Enternal_Flame67 responded in her usual mature tone, to which our group's warrior began to argue back with an ever rising tone filled with inner rage, and it was starting to hurt my ears a little. I made a mental note to turn down the volume as I continued to listen to our team's warrior grumble on about how different he was from the Loweeans, to which none of us really cared.

But before I could say anything to calm the situation, another voice, that belonged to one of our other teammates took to the stage, so to speak. It was our monk, who sounded like an underage kid. "Ah come on, guys! We're all friends here, right? There's no need for us to argue over things like little kids."

"Says the one who sounds like a little kid," I respond back after brushing aside my brown coloured forehead bangs, causing a few members of the team to either burst out laughing or simply chuckle in amusement. When we all heard our monk grumble to himself in a whiny tone, which he usually did whenever something did not go his way. I thought it was best to apologise, at least a bit of an apology anyway - I did not really like the guy, but he enjoyed being on the team and at least had some of our respect. "Hey, hey, it's alright, Tillman the Great Monk I didn't mean for you to start crying like a little wuss again, really."

"I-I-I'm not crying!" Tillman the Great Monk shouted back, which only made me giggle in response - it was hard to take him seriously at this point. I had no idea why he called himself Tillman the Great Monk, aside from the monk part naturally, although the 'Great' part was a little egotistical on his part.

"Ah deal with it, ya wimp," another member of our team grumbled in response to Tillman's outburst. This team member was the newest to the group, along with some other guy who grunted most of the time in an untranslatable language, if it was even a language at all - the grumbling guy seemed to understand it at least.

These two newest additions to our team had named themselves Fish_Lord and Herman; yeah, we all thought that it was strange. Fish_Lord was a mage while Herman was a bard, although no one ever asked him for any songs from his magical flute nor for any buffs due to an incident when a team member was eaten by an ogre, neither did I ask anything for that matter. It was not because we disliked him or because he happened to be bad at the game, far from it in fact, but it was more due to the fact that Herman kept making odd groans whenever he buffed one of us. Got really annoying quite fast.

We all thought that Fish_Lord and Herman were a gay couple, at least that was what we initially thought a week ago when they joined up with the group when I sent them an invite after a meeting in a tavern, but by this point we came to the conclusion that they were simply crazy and beyond mental hope. We usually used them as bait during a dangerous mission, which it worked most of the time since the two newbies were horrible fighters. Yeah, it was mean to do that, but those two did not seem to mind it all too much, considering they got paid for it if the mission was a success.

As the team began to argue amongst themselves, with Crimson Fucker and Tillman the Great Monk being the most obnoxious and loudest of them all, I sighed deeply, took off my green headphones and fell back onto the dark brown leather couch. _How the hell did I end up like this, listening to total gits in a barely working online game?_ I asked myself as I laid down on the couch, my hands behind my head and a leg crossed over the other. _Playing online games with people I don't know, having to put up with their constant whining, bitching, fighting, all for the sake of a game review that I have to write up and post on the Leanbox Certified Web. Is this what my life has come to? What happened to my dream job as a manager of a video game store?_

I sighed once again before putting on the headphones to hear what was going on, and what I heard was not all that good. It sounded as if the very team I had helped recruit, train and befriend to a degree over the last couple of weeks was tearing itself apart through petty arguments down each other's microphones. It was more than a little difficult to deal with it, especially since I had brought most of these people together to test out some new updates for this MMORPG so I could finish off a review of it.

 _Idiots, the lot of them. Can't they just sort out their differences through calm and thought out words, not just by shouting?_ I thought to myself as I took my headphones off once again, stood up and walked away from the white walled and black carpet living room; my destination was towards the kitchen so I could find something to drink.

As I opened the fridge I took out my water bottle and took a few sips before realising something, although how I managed to link the two together was kind of odd in retrospect. _Jeez, that's what this whole war is about, isn't it? Just some people who couldn't talk it out like proper adults. Well, war never changes, not even in games that people argue on for whatever reasons they have. Hmm, my dad sure got that right at least – that's a first._

As I put the water bottle back in the fridge, I yawned from all the fatigue I had accumulated over the last few months due to my 'profession' as an online game reviewer, which was something that I thought I would do once I had my own game store up and running. If I could not get my own store then I could have at least worked in one to see what it was like and earn some easy money, but many people who work and run the shops - and not just the game stores mind you - had been conscripted into the army for the war effort. It has been utterly annoying. What has also annoyed the hell out of me and my mother has been the constant tax raising to fund the war effort. Sometimes I wonder where all that money went to.

I was just glad that the recruiters had not swept me into their ranks; I'm not good with taking orders from anybody, and the idea of snobby officers bellowing orders and demands at me just did not sit well. I mean, I am kind of okay in a fight now, thanks to my dad's training and my own self teaching after an incident about two years back, but I am definitely no soldier. I am simply a gamer, and I prefer to let it stay that way. Oh, and a farmer, I was born and raised as a farmer. It is a terrible job, though. I barely take part in it any more, in fact I had not even touched a farming tool for over a six months now. Yeah, I have been a complete and utter slob, but what else could I do around the farm? Nothing. The life of a farmer just was not cut out for me. Still, it could be worse.

I ruffled up my long brown hair as I returned to the couch, from where I could actually hear the yelling from my teammates through the headphones I had left lying around. Once more I sighed and shook my head due to the idiocy of the team members, although from what I could hear it seemed that Enternal_Flame67 had given up, left a message on the screen for everyone to see - which basically informed everyone that she had had enough for the day - and left the game to do goddess knows what.

 _I should do the same, don't want mum to get all annoyed with me thanks to an overly large power bill again._ I silently reason to myself as I slumped back down onto the couch, making the headphones bounce up for a second. _Ugh. I should get on with starting that review of this game, it's gonna take me weeks to get it over and done with at this rate. Damn Writer's Block, it always makes me frustrated._

With a heavy grunt I bend over to my left, picked up the headphones and placed them back over my head. As soon as I did that I wished I had never picked the damn thing up to begin with. My teammates were still arguing with each other, even Herman had joined in with his usual grunting noises. Sometimes I wished I had never met them in the game's tavern, but if I had not met them then my review would have been much harder to draft. I flip the microphone down near my mouth and began to speak through it, gaining the attention of my ridiculous teammates, or at least a few of them at first.

"Hey, I gotta go now and get that review started. The draft's been mildly completed, so I have to get back to work. I'll catch up with you lot later," I tell them, doing my best to fully disrupt the argument that continued to plague the voice chat between the lot of us.

"You're a piece of shit, Fish guy! Screw yo- Huh? Oh, alright then, Holy Flame Master, good luck and everything, I guess," Crimson Fucker responded once he realised I was talking down the mic again. Yes, my online name was Holy Flame Master; I chose that name due to an online discussion about cancerous memes, _really_ cancerous memes that got me all riled up, hence the online name that I have to this day. Bloody memes, I'm sure we are all going to become memes at some point.

Before I could leave the game and log off my LeanBox One, Fish_Lord had something to say. "Yeah this place got pretty cancerous quick. Well, if you're feeling suicidal you've definitely come to the right place, boys and girls."

"Ugh. Just shut up, this game is over already. Go back to whatever you were originally doing before we booted this thing up and got owned," I replied back with a snarky tone, which caused Crimson Fucker to chuckle before he logged off.

"Whatever," was all Fish_Lord could reply with before he logged off along with Herman, who was making some really weird noises from what I could hear.

As soon as everyone had left the game and logged off from their own LeanBox Ones, I followed suit by logging off and turning the wide screen television off along with it before taking my headphones off, which I then neatly tucked away near my favourite console on the second shelf of the small cupboard that held up the television, along with my console controller.

As soon as I had done that I heard the front door open to reveal my mother coming into the house. From what I could see of her, it appeared that my mother had been working hard in the fields again. My mother's long brown hair was messy with bits of wheat sticking out everywhere; her short-sleeved, white collar shirt also had bits of wheat sticking out all over the place; even her blue jeans and light brown boots suffered the same way. My mother took one glance at me and a bright smile appeared on her light weather-worn face.

"How are you, Vilelvia?" my mother asked as she walked over to where I was sitting and ruffled up my hair affectionately, her light blue eyes staring lovingly at me as per usual.

"I'm fine, mum, I just need to get started on my review for this game I was just playing not too long ago," I respond back, giving my mum a caring smile as she walked away towards the kitchen, no doubt to get herself a bottle of water, or Vert Dew, a popular fizzy drink we have in Leanbox.

However, as soon as I had said the word review, my mother sighed with disappointment, no doubt because she found my current 'job' lacking with profit and was a complete waste of time; I had no reason to disagree with her, the online game review thing was more of a hobby than an actual line of work. "Darling, can't you just find a proper job instead of this game review hobby? Or better yet, why don't you help me with the farm? We still have an acre or two of wheat left that needs to be harvested," my mother informed me as she returned to the couch and sat down next to me, once she had taken a long and large swig out of a Vert Dew can.

In response to my mum's suggestions, I sighed deeply in an unsatisfied way. "But mum, I don't want to plow the fields or whatever you do out there - it's boring as hell. As for the whole job thing, well, I've been trying my best to find something, but it's like flogging a dead horse. Every resume I send in keeps getting rejected. Ugh. I mean, it's not like there isn't any position open or anything, there's plenty actually. Guess they just don't like me."

"What about trying to get an apprenticeship in the medical sciences? You're pretty good at that stuff," my mother suggested to me, although it sounded as if she was just being hopeful at this point that I would actually do something she considered productive.

I merely scoffed at the thought of going off to some university to spend three to five years working on some medicine or science degree, I just had no interest in it in the slightest, even if I happened to be mildly good at some basic first-aid stuff. "Pfft, yeah right, like that'll happen. Just because I can do some of the basic stuff doesn't mean that I'm a genius with medicine and all that, hell I can't even name a lot of that crap."

"Well, um, I'm sure you'll find a job somewhere, I just know it," my mother told me in a reassuring tone along with a bright smile. "You'll get lucky someday, trust me. I certainly did"

I chuckled at the mere idea of me getting lucky one day; I was probably going to be an old fart by the time I finally got a proper job that paid well, like a couple of people I knew back at high school. "Yeah right, that won't happen any time soon, mum. You only got lucky because dad had a lot of money. Uh, n-not that you married him b-because of that or anything!"

My mother chuckled and wrapped an arm around me, bringing me in closer to her. "I know, I know, don't worry about that. I guess I just did get lucky, but I know you can do it. Now, about the subject of men, have you managed to get yourself a boyfriend yet? You've been single for two years now, and you never told me what went on between you and your previous boyfriend. I'm guessing you must've had a hard time together."

Ah, my previous boyfriend. The nerves in my arms shivered when I remembered everything that went on between me and him - we had a hard time getting along well with each other during the last month together. Was glad to get away from him and his annoying habits. However, I had almost lost complete control of the nerves in my arms and even in my right leg until my mother snapped me back to reality with her gentle words. "Are you okay, Vilevia? You're body is starting to act up again. Has it got something to do with that man you were dating? Did you two get into a fight before breaking up?"

"I, uh… I don't want to talk about it," was all I could mumble back in response as I looked away from my mother, causing her to sigh deeply.

"Well, alright then, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to. But you are going to have to tell me someday, it pains me to see you get all stiff and frightened whenever I mention that guy, that and whenever there is a man around who isn't your father. Hmph. Your father. Wished he spent more time here than wandering about," my mother replied, giving me a tight and affectionate hug. Her words when it came to my father, however, just sounded of annoyance.

Once she had let me go and stood up she looked back and gave me another one of her usual heartwarming smile, which was something that she always had since her childhood apparently. "Now then, how about I make us some nice hot tea and small cakes while you go and start that online game review? Sounds good to you, Vilelvia? Just don't go eating the cakes too quickly this time, we don't have a lot of ingredients left to make a large amount of them."

I nodded and giggled, liking what my mother was proposing to me. "Alright then, sounds good. I'll try not to eat too much this time; no promises though. Also try not to use up too much ingredients, don't want to waste too much money trying to stock up on more with all these extortionate high prices going about."

It was then that I began to think about myself, my name to be exact. I looked at a nearby dirty mirror to see my reflection, whereupon I simply sighed deeply and noticed how messy my brown hair and ponytail was; glad that the long bangs that flowed down either side of my face did not need the attention the rest of my hair did.

Vilelvia. It was an odd name and one I would not have chosen for myself, but apparently it was an old, traditional Leanboxian name that was used frequently two centuries ago during the reign of Venus, or so my mother said anyway; my father never gave me a proper explanation. My full name happened to be Vilelvia Vandelius of Leanbox, which in itself was not all that interesting, if one was not to take in account how odd the last name was as well. But what was most interesting about me is my eyes: my left dark red eye and my right light blue eye.

Genetically I got my light blue eye from my mother while my dark red eye came from my father. I heard years ago when I was little that it was highly common - and expected - for Leanboxians to be born with blue eyes, no matter the shading of it. Dark red eyes, however, were most uncommon, so uncommon in fact that apparently any shade of red eyes did not belong to pure Leanboxian bloodlines, or were an odd mutation within the gene pool. At least that was what the science teacher I had for middle school explained it all as. It was confusing as hell, and I guess it still is. Also it made no sense whatsoever.

Overall it mattered little to me though, especially now. As I looked away from the mirror I noticed how the nerves in my right leg and arm had not yet calmed down, which caused me to grumble at myself before I reached into right trouser pocket and brought out a small metal canteen. I glanced over at my mother to see if she was not looking over at me, which she was not, then I proceeded to swiftly open the top of the canteen and pour the warm liquid inside down my throat. A few seconds later my nerves started to calm down, albeit slowly. It was always a struggle to not drink a lot of the liquid, and sometimes I lost that battle. This time, however, I managed to keep myself from drinking anything more.

With a satisfied sigh I placed the lid back on and hid the canteen in my pocket; I was ready to help my mum with whatever she needed. However, as I stood up off the couch to walk away to my room, the doorbell rang loudly, echoing throughout the entire house. I looked at my mother, who glanced at me with a worrisome expression upon her face for some odd reason. Once mum opened the door we were both met by the last people I expected to see: two female soldiers, a sergeant and a corporal by the look of the badges that were visible on the upper left hand side of their green flak combat armour.

From what I heard from people and seen in posters, flak combat armour was like military issued combat armour that one could find throughout southern, western and eastern Gamindustri from what I heard from a few old people who had been discharged from the military due to severe injuries or mental disabilities, but the Leanboxian flak combat armour was more flexible, durable and had better protection, and it was worn over dark green pants and either a dark green shirt or a light brown shirt. Unfortunately most common soldiers were not fully encased in the light flak armour, only the Kasrkin Specialists and officers had a full set.

Instead, as it was described to me by some old guy I met in a supermarket and from the look of the posters, it appeared that only some parts of the body were protected, such as the head, chest and some parts of the arms and legs. Still, I heard it was better than what the other nations had. I also heard that those aristocrats who act as officers in infantry regiments have better armour than all the others under their command. Bloody favouritism - I guess that's what you get around here. However, I was more concerned with what these soldiers were here for.

The sergeant, a grumpy-looking woman with piercing blue eyes and short orange hair, stared at both me and mum for a few silent moments, which was then interrupted by my nervous mother. "Um… hello, can I help you?" she asked after taking a step back.

"Yes, you can. We are a part of the Recruitment Team, a branch of the Leanbox Army, and we are here to recruit Leanboxians into our ranks. Do you see where I am going with this?" the orange haired sergeant replied without a single hint of emotion.

It was then that I realised what was going on: it was a recruitment spree. Whether my mother would allow them to recruit either her or me, or both, was entirely up to her, if we had a choice. The sergeant raised an eyebrow at my mother's visible nervousness before turning her gaze towards me. "You are Vilelvia Vandelius, daughter of Lamilia Vandelius and the missing Calalyn Vandelius?" she asked me in her stern, unnerving tone.

I nodded, the hair on the back of my neck standing up out of concern, or fright – either one at this point. "Uh huh, that's, um, that's me all right. Wait, how do you know me and my parents?"

"We have access to government records concerning the citizens of Leanbox, that way we have a better idea on who to recruit," the corporal responded smiling, surprisingly sounding a lot more chirpier than the orange haired sergeant. The corporal was shorter than the other officer and definitely a lot more cheerful - I guess one had to act as a counterbalance for the other when it came to recruiting. "So, what do you say? Want to join the army and make a contribution to the war effort? It'll turn in our favour soon, just you wait."

I shook my head, which surprisingly did not really affect the two soldiers standing in the doorway. "Er, no thanks, soldiering just isn't my cup of tea. I don't like the idea of killing other people for a living, it just doesn't sound like something I'd do. Besides, I've got a game review to finish up here."

"Is that so? Well then, it sure is a pity for you since you have no choice," the sergeant responded while grinning back at me, obviously taking some pleasure out of seeing me squirm in my own boots. "You see, a week or two ago our most gracious ruler, Lady Green Heart, was forced to issue a nationwide edict, proclaiming that one member of each family between the ages of sixteen and forty-five to be conscripted into the armed forces and be made ready for the front lines. You don't have a choice in the matter."

"What?! Screw that shit, I ain't going to fight and kill in some useless war," I grumbled back without holding back how I felt about the idea of being conscripted and being forced to kill people, all while glaring at this orange haired sergeant as if she was a piece of hair in an omelette.

My backlash was, obviously, not well received by the grumpy sergeant, or her companion all that much either - guess the corporal did not like me swearing. What an oddball. However, while I was ready for a verbal argument I was most certainly not prepared for what happened next. Without as much as a word or even a sound, the sergeant grabbed my left shoulder and pushed me up against the wall, catching me completely off guard. Out of instinct, and due to anger, I tried to resist and fight back by elbowing the sergeant across her face and a quick knee to her stomach, which was then followed by a rough body slam to get her out of my way. This sudden strike startled the sergeant and shocked my mum.

I was pretty quick and agile, but not strong enough to get away from the conscripting sergeant, let alone even make a proper mark against her. Just some simple counterattack was not going to get me out of this mess any time soon; wish I realised that when I retaliated. In quick succession the sergeant slammed my leg and arm away and swiftly clobbered me back against the wall, this time with more force, which took the wind out of me. She was strong, damn strong. Guess I could not fault the army for making their soldiers tough.

"You're a feisty one aren't you? No matter, we'll get that rebellious nature out of you eventually, with some proper training and patriotism. You'll get used to it, I'm sure of it," the orange haired sergeant told me in a stern tone while slowly letting go of me, which did little to calm my nerves, quite the opposite in fact. But she was not finished with her demented patriotic talking. "You should be honoured, fighting for your country, saving it from the heretics that assault us."

"Pfft, yeah right, as if. Why would I be glad to kill innocents just to protect a country that our Goddess should do herself? There isn't any need for killing," I tried to explain while attempting to get away, but to no avail as I was forced back against the wall. "Tch. Just let me go already, I'm not going to fight in a war you bloody bastards helped escalate!"

"That's enough, Vileliva! Don't make matters worse than they already are by picking fights with these soldiers," my mother shouted at me amidst tears of frustration and sorrow, her gaze directed towards me in a sad gesture. I almost could not believe neither my ears nor my eyes; I was in complete shock with what my mother was saying. But before I could say anything about it my mother continued talking. "Listen, I know you're angry and afraid, but there isn't anything we can to do stop this. I'm sorry, sweetie, I'm really sorry, but you'll just have to find a way to survive this ordeal. I'm really sorry."

I could not say anything out of shock at first, as was evident with my expression. I just could not believe what I was hearing here. My own mother was just going to let me be taken by the army by force and put up with me enduring whatever crap I would undoubtedly have to go through, but in retrospect there was nothing she could do about it, especially with two well trained soldiers standing close by. Still, it felt like a betrayal to me right at that moment. "But mum, this… this something I can't do."

This time it was my mother who was unable to say anything. She appeared distraught, upset and weak, unable to help me with what I was going to go through. A new life was waiting for me whether I liked it or not, and I was not liking it so far. Being forced to leave home, travel to some other place, get brainwashed by a huge dose of patriotism and taught how to kill was just, well, shit really. It was really going to be shit. It was out of my control.

This is what I thought to myself as I was frogmarched out of the house and towards a long, green bus filled with grim-looking people and a few soldiers carrying rifles, when suddenly my mother ran up to me with a bag filled with some of my personal stuff in it. She stared at me with sad eyes, tears falling down her cheeks. "You best take these before you… leave. We'll see each other again, sweetie, I'm sure of it. I _know_ it. When this world is set right things will get back to normal," my mother promised me, barely able to keep herself together.

"I hope so, mum I really do. Keep yourself safe, and if you ever get to see that bum I call dad just… just tell him I said hi, and goodbye," I said in response as I hugged my mother tightly, all I could feel were sad emotions as I gripped tightly on my mum's shirt, my face burying itself into her right shoulder. I was quickly forced along once again by the sergeant and the corporal towards the bus.

I took a quick look back at my mother, who was unable to hold back her tears as she waved a 'goodbye' to me. I did the same back to her as a single tear fell down my face as I stepped onto the bus. The life I knew was now basically over. My life as a normal human being would never be the same again. My new existence as an unwilling soldier for a war that I had no interest in had begun, and I was not looking forward to the experience. I silently begged to the heavens of Celestia to give me strength, for I was certain that I needed it.

* * *

 **A/N: Finally finished off the editorial stage of this chapter, and I'm glad it's over with. Time to get a move on with chapter 2, which is going to take a while since it's under heavy changes regarding characters and their personalities as well as their introductions. As some might have already figured out, there are references to other franchises - try to keep a tally on them if you can. The next chapter isn't going to be out for a while, give it a few weeks at best; chapters after that might take longer since I'll be rewriting them from scratch. Anyway, thanks for reading and have a good day if possible.  
**


	3. A New Life

**Chapter 2: A New Life  
**

The green bus was crowded, very crowded, in fact from what I could see it appeared that the entire vehicle was filled to the brim with people who had been conscripted to join the military, no doubt by force from the looks on some of their faces, and the occasional soldier with a rifle in their hands. There appeared to be twenty to twenty-five people from what I could see, discounting the soldiers naturally. I looked back to see the sergeant glaring at me, undoubtedly wanting me to find a seat and sit down within a second.

With a disgruntled sigh I tightened my grip on the bag I was carrying and hurried myself to find an unoccupied seat, which proved to be harder than I previously imagined; there was just nowhere to sit for row after row after row. Things just moved from bad to worse when the bus started to move down the countryside road, which only made me bump into a few of my fellow conscripts every now and then - none of whom were amused with me bumping into them or being in the bus to begin with. I definitely could not blame them, I felt the same way as they did, although that did little to calm me down.

"Shit! Sorry about that! My bad, I'm sorry! It's the bus, not me. Gah! Oh bugger. Again, I'm sorry and all that," I repeatedly apologise to everyone I accidentally bump into thanks to the bus as it moved down the highway, turning down corners until it finally reached the main highway. It would have been a nice view that I could have admired if I was not trying to find a seat.

As I neared the back of the bus, no doubt making several enemies along the way by accident, I finally came across an empty seat next to some woman, who was gazing out the window next to her. She seemed distracted by the green fields and tall trees outside, distracted enough to not notice me standing next to her, so I had to cough for her attention, which worked like a charm. I pointed at the seat next to her, trying to get my point across as best I could without making too much of a fuss. Fortunately for me she gave me a bright smile and nodded. I quickly sat down next to her as fast as I could, to which she then introduced herself, kind of anyway. Turned out she preferred to ask questions before introductions.

"Hi there. You're alright? You're looking kinda sick," she said to me with a hint of concern in her voice. That was when she slapped her forehead, which knocked back her baseball cap, and giggled to herself for a moment. "Oh, sorry about that, I forgot to properly introduce myself. Not the first time it's happened mind you. The name's Relinna Madales. What's yours?"

"I'm Vilelvia Vandelius, was just… er, you know, conscripted not too long ago, forcibly too" I reply back, giving Relinna a smile as I adjusted into the seat, which was far from being comfortable. "Also I wasn't all that sick just before, it was simply the bus rocking all over the place and I was being forced to bump into people who were sitting down. I think I made some new enemies now; they were glaring at me for the most part whenever I bumped into them."

I watched as Relinna laughed at my response as she picked her cap back up and placed it back on her head, apparently finding my queasy expression quite funny. Oh well, at least she was a cheery type of person, unlike everyone else I caught sight of in this damnable bus. From what I could see, Relinna was apparently a bit shorter than me, had blonde hair that flowed down to her shoulders and spiked blonde bangs covered parts of her forehead, her eyes were a dark shade of green and she appeared to be naturally cheerful, just like that corporal from before, only with a more toothy grin.

From what I saw so far Relinna seemed to be of a good nature, plus she was friendly as well; I was never really good with talking to people face to face, unless it was my mother or my father, so this was a nice change for once. From what I could see it appeared that Relinna was wearing a green shirt with the symbol of Leanbox over her left breast, tight blue jeans, an unzipped white jacket with the sleeves rolled up above her elbows and her green baseball cap. Judging from how she had been enjoying the view of the countryside it was possible that she was from a urban area, most likely from the nearby town that was close to my mother's farm.

"Say, you don't look like a farmer, like some of the other guys and gals in this bus. Why are, or I guess were, you living out here in the middle of nowhere?" Relinna asked me as the bus passed down onto a separate highway that led towards the capital city of Leanbox, which incidentally had the same name as the country itself - it was all rather odd and confusing when I was taught that at school.

But yeah, Relinna was right, I did not appear to be a farmer, instead I had more in common with the local town residents than the farmers themselves, even my father noted that difference when he was still around to talk to. I nodded to my new friend, at least I presumed we were friends anyway; from how we were casually talking it felt like it.

"Heh, I suppose you're right about that, in some way or another. Never got into that so-called 'farmer spirit'," I respond back after giving into a chuckle. "In fact, I wanted to run my own game store in the nearby town. It would've been nice if my resume had been accepted by those smartasses, that way I would've had some real experience by now. Ugh, I doubt I'll even get my dream job now, with all this going on and everything."

"Yeah, I hear ya about that, a damn pity," Relinna sympathised with me, nodding in agreement. "Before I was conscripted today I was originally working in a supermarket and had just gotten a promotion to Staff Supervisor, which came with an increased pay check. The job wasn't much, but at least I was getting money for the family, aka my two younger sisters."

I raised an eyebrow and a shocked expression began to form across my face upon hearing what Relinna had to say. _Two younger sisters, and she was forced to join the army and leave them to fend for themselves? Isn't that just a bit… wrong?_ I thought to myself as her words raced through my mind. "Um, how young are these little sisters of yours? If they're young shouldn't they have some sort of guardian?"

"Hmm? Oh, the older one is around seventeen while the other is about fourteen, so they're able to look after themselves. I texted my aunt to keep an eye on them just in case they get into trouble. Don't want some random creep to get close to them while I'm off fighting," Relinna replied back to me with a worried tone, which I could not blame her for at all. Silence then reigned for the next few minutes, neither one of us able to come up with a topic to discuss

But finally, something new was asked, and by a different newcomer to the conversation was a man, a pretty chirpy one at that, even though it seemed pretty forced by the look of it, then there was the unwell look on his face as well. The man had fiery red hair that was completely messy, brown eyes and a twitchy eyelid; he seemed to be very nervous about the situation we had found ourselves thrusted into without warning. I was more than a little shocked when this guy just joined in the conversation, which was to cause some confusion and worries down the line.

"H-Hey there, n-nice to see that there are some people in this damn bus that are actually talking nicely to each other. D-Do you, um, m-mind if I joined in? I don't have much else to do here," he asked as cheerfully as he could while his hands grabbed hold of the top of our seat near our heads, although it was obvious that the stress of being conscripted by force and transferred to some unknown place had gotten to him.

However, when the redhead gazed at me I could not help but swiftly look away, the nerves in my hands, arms and fingers began to twitch uncontrollably. _Damn my nerves to the Graveyard! Why does this new person have to be a guy of all people? Fuck this nervous disorder! Shit, guess I'll have to try to deal with it for the rest of this trip._ I think to myself, trying my best to calm my nerves so I don't appear to be shivering with fright. It only happens around men that are near me, if I know they are there that is. _Concentrate… concentrate… concentrate… I can do it, I can do it. Breathe in, breathe out. I can keep it under control; I've been friends with guys before._

"Um, are you alright, Vilelvia? You're very pale, and you're limbs are shaking all over? Is something wrong?" Relinna asked me in a highly worried voice, reaching a hand out and gently rested the palm on my left shoulder just as I began to take control of my nerves, at least to an extent, for there was still some minor twitching.

"I-I'm fine, really. S-Sorry about that, my nerves aren't all that good. Got a bit jumpy is all; there's no need to worry yourself over me," I tell Relinna and the redhead behind us. What I told them was true, from a certain point of view anyway. I barely knew these two people so I felt uncomfortable explaining anything to them.

Relinna and the brown-eyed redhead did not seem to be all that convinced, but fortunately for me they chose to not discuss the subject further. However, the brown eyed redhead still appeared to be more than a little confused about what had just happened, and by the look on his face it seemed as if he blamed himself for what had happened.

"I-It's okay, mister, it wasn't your fault or anything," I try to reason with him while doing my best to keep myself calm. I did not really mind the new guy for the moment, but I was just uncomfortable around men altogether.

"Oh, uh, it's fine, really. But thanks for saying that anyway, it makes me feel a bit better," the redhead sighed and gave me a pitiful smile, which I silently resented - being pitied was something I did not enjoy, in fact I normally get annoyed and sometimes pissed off whenever somebody showed pity towards me. What was there to pity about me anyway?

Meanwhile Relinna turned her gaze away from me and straight onto the redhead behind us, which was where the conversation was heading for the moment. That was fine with me, since it gave me time to quickly take a swig out of my small canteen, which I still had in my right pocket. After swiftly drinking some of the warm liquid in the canteen I put it back into my pocket and wiped my mouth along the cuff of my dark brown jacket.

Meanwhile the blonde woman next to me took a long, good look at the redhead, as if she was studying him like some wild specimen or something. After me and the redhead gave Relinna a curious gaze, she spoke. "Huh, I knew it. You ain't feeling too good, aren't you? I can tell by the look on your face," she asked the redhead, giving him a cheeky grin.

The redhead stuttered at first, when all of a sudden he hunched downwards he wrapped one arm around his stomach while the other firmly massages his forehead, when suddenly it looked like he would throw up on me and Relinna. Fortunately he failed to do just that, which merely resulted in the blonde woman grinning and nudging the poor guy with her right elbow. "Heh, I _was_ right after all. You just couldn't throw up on us beautiful ladies, ain't that right?" she said to him with a devious and cheeky tone as she continued to nudge the redhead.

I watched as the redhead coughed into his right fist for a few seconds before looking up at Relinna with a less than pleasant gaze. "Yeah, aren't you lucky, eh? Just stop nudging me already, would you? It isn't making anything better for me you know."

It was then that I started to piece it all together; to be perfectly honest it was obvious after I had gave it some thought. "You... have motion sickness, don't you?" I asked the redhead cautiously; I was even amazed that I was even talking to him at this point.

The redhead nodded weakly as he looked in my direction, by this point Relinna had stopped nudging him with her elbow. "Yeah, I have motion sickness. I don't like being on moving vehicles, it just makes me want to throw up. Oh, d-don't worry about it, I actually haven't thrown up in a moving vehicle since I was a kid, so it should be fine. Unless we're in the air, then I _might_ throw up."

"Well, um, thanks for the info, I guess," Relinna said in an unsure tone, which was perfectly reasonable. The conversation seemed to be null and void at that moment, and I was just about to watch the various trees and shrubs that we were passing as the bus continued on its way down the highway, when Relinna finally said something that we should have asked before. "So, what's your name?"

"Roderius. Roderius Richardson," the redhead replied, once he had regained his original composure that is. He then gave a small smile in our direction. "I'm from one of the countryside towns, I think it was the one to the south of your farm… Um, what's your names? I think I heard them before when you two were talking to each other, but I, uh, I've f-forgotten."

Relinna grinned widely as she sat properly back down into her seat. "Hey, no problem, we'll tell you. I'm Relinna Madales the one who is always cheerful and cheeky all the time, and this here is Vilelvia Vandelius, the one who has bad nerves. Nice to meet ya, matey boy. Weird name you have. Mind if I call you Richardson, Richy or Roddy?"

"Um, nice to meet you too, though I didn't need that much info about you two. And yeah, any of those can work since almost everyone I know calls be by either of those three, though I actually prefer my first name, no matter how confusing to say it is," the young man responded, rubbing the back of his head. Soon afterwards he looked over to his left, looked out the window and pointed towards the north-west, where all we could see were large fields of grass, energy poles, small glazes of trees with an express highway coming off a main road and over a river.

"What a view. My family originated from that way, from some place called Hero City – biggest harbour city in all of Leanbox they said," he began to explain to the two of us, seemingly finding some sort of calmness in talking about it, for some reason or another. "Apparently it got hit pretty bad by Planeptune a while back, around five or six years ago I think, and they had actually managed to capture it, but that didn't last too long. I heard Lady Green Heart herself along with some of them Spartans led the charge to recapture the city, smashing those damn Planeptunians to the Graveyard and back."

It was then that Roderius sighed with a goofy expression upon his face; it seemed that by mentioning Green Heart, Goddess of Leanbox, the redhead had started to think about all sorts of things regarding the Green Goddess herself. It was kind of weird to see. Relinna, however giggled with amusement and tapped Roderius's head to gain his attention, which did happen. "Heh, you're fantasising yourself pervertedly with Lady Green Heart, aren't you?" she questioned the young man, whose cheeks I could see blushing bright red with embarrassment. "Hah! I knew it, I just knew it! You're a pervert."

"I-I-I am not!" Roderius exclaimed, which only caused Relinna to giggle loudly, much to the young man's chagrin.

It was time for me to step in and defuse the situation before it escalated into an argument; did not want to have the entire bus paying attention to us. "Come on, Relinna, stop picking on him already, he's obviously embarrassed and might start to get really annoyed if you keep going on like that," I told the blonde woman next to me, trying to reason with her before she does something that would make Richardson explode in fury, if he could that is, was difficult to tell due to how timid he seemed.

Much to the young man's good fortune, Relinna stopped bugging him with comments that apparently pointed him out as a 'funny pervert' and whatnot, although she did seemed to be a little bummed out afterwards. All I did afterwards was sigh as I turned my attention towards whatever could be seen outside while Relinna and Roderius continued to talk to each other, barring any teasing this time. Never bothered to understand what they were going on about though, I simply ignored it sisnce it did not involve me.

I had always enjoyed watching the countryside of Leanbox, it always brought peace to my mind whenever I was troubled by something, and it still does. Must be because of the serenity that comes from such a peaceful place; not everywhere like this happened to be as lucky, such as the western coast for example. Naval warfare and bombing had scarred the land there from what the locals down in the nearby town had told me. Sometimes I wished for nothing more than an end to the Console War so I could just venture all over Gamindustri and see what the other nations had to offer. I thought of that a lot when I was a kid, that and being in charge of a game store; adventure first then own a game store. But now this war has ended my dreams, and many others' dreams as well.

That was when I began to think over what the sergeant said back in my house, about the part when she mentioned that people between the ages of eighteen and forty-five were forcibly conscripted into the army, and that got me thinking. _Say, if people between those ages are conscripted into the armed forces, wouldn't the workforce be diminished considerably? By the True Goddess, just imagine how little money the government would be getting because of that._ I think to myself, my arms behind my head. _Actually, I'm sure they would have thought about that. I think only one member from each family is chosen to be conscripted, that would explain why only I was chosen and not my mother. Hmm, I don't know how old my mum is, must be around her mid forties by now. Goddess knows about dad._

After around a few hours, maybe between two to four at least, I noticed the bus starting to slow down and go down off the highway towards some sort of very small town located nearby. I narrowed my eyes to view the nearby large sign that we zoomed past just a couple seconds later, only managing to read one name that I presumed was the name of the town. 'Springvale', so it read. Never got to see what the total population was, but I guessed that it was most likely small, like a rural town. I suppose it was just small because of the capital city nearby, which several tall and oversized buildings could be seen on the horizon.

Relinna, Roderius and I watched the bus driver take the bus down a street in the middle of the small town, which was indeed tiny, and stop off by a house that was a bit further away from a few tall wooden, stone and brick houses. It looked as if this grumpy sergeant and her chirpy companion had found their latest conscript. The sergeant made no sound as she grabbed her clipboard, gently flicked the young woman by her side to get up and follow, then proceeded to leave the bus to to over to the house for the conscription thing. I decided to tune out right around then and chose to focus on Relinna, who was happily shuffling some poker cards together. She seemed pretty skillful at it and with her own style to boot, too.

Our redhead companion stared at the display with little interest, but since it was one of the only two things that could distract him - the other was simply staring out the window to gaze at the area around us - it looked as if he merely chose to distract himself and find some amusement or something or rather, whether it would work for him or not was another matter entirely. It certainly worked for me, at least for now anyway. Relinna glanced over at the two of us and grinned. "So, you two up for a quick game of poker, or maybe something else, like blackjack or guess the card?"

"I don't think we'd have the time for poker or blackjack, nor the space for it, so guess the card works fine for me," I replied with a shrug; it really did not bother me all that much to be perfectly honest.

Roderius, however, was less than inclined as I was with whatever game we were going to play with the cards available. "Eh, I don't feel like playing any sort of card game. I'm not too lucky with, well, anything really, so I'm out for now."

"Pfft, you're a wuss, Richy, a complete and utter total wuss. Who cares if you don't have that much luck? If you're completely bored out of your mind in this damn bus just stop your complaining and let's be friends already… by playing a round of guess the card," our blonde haired companion said cheerfully in response. The fact that she was already trying to make friends out of me and the red haired young man behind us was amusing as well as endearing, in a peculiar way. She did not seem to be all that bad, if only a bit odd so far.

I watched as the redhead grumbled to himself, muttering something under his breath about not having a lot of luck and preferring to do something else instead, although whether he noticed that me and Relinna could actually hear him I never found out. Eventually he caved in, sighed deeply and accepted the reality of the situation. "All right then, fine, maybe I'll play along and guess the card, but I most likely won't win at all."

"Hey, you can never be too sure about the odds, that's what makes card games so intense and exciting," Relinna told our red haired acquaintance with quite a lot of enthusiasum, her eyes staring deep into his own. "C'mon, it'll be fun. I'll let you go first~"

I found it a bit surprising to hear Relinna talk in such a sultry voice to Roderius, and kind of weird too. The look she also gave our redhead acquaintance was rather questionable – it looked more like a gaze that some mistress of seduction would give to a horny man, or woman for that matter. All I could do was simply look on with a disturbed expression as I watched Roderius try not to blush brightly like a ripe tomato, which he utterly failed at. Pfft, men and their hormones, they can never seem to keep them under control. Still, it had the desired effect, if what Relinna indeed wanted was for the red haired young man to play a card game with no worries.

"F-F-Fine then, I-I'll play along for now, for reals," the red haired man said as he glanced away from Relinna's gaze, which was probably for the best considering – from what I had seen so far of his personality – that he was just a tad too nervous.

The response made our blonde haired companion grin widely as she began to shuffle the deck of cards in her hands, meanwhile I noticed a development happening outside the bus by a house nearby. There was some sort of argument or something of the sort occurring out by the door of the house with the sergeant and corporal on one side and a young silver haired woman on the other against them, which from what I could see was getting kind of heated. Even though I oculd not understand what they were saying to each other, it was easy to guess what the issue was – I was very sure most of us on the bus had had the same argument with the recruiters.

Roderius, who had turned his attention away from our blonde haired acquaintance's exquisite and overly dramatic card shuffling, looked over towards where I had been staring at and noticed the commotion outside the house. "Huh, doesn't look good out there for that person d-does it?"

"You got that right. Seems like they're going to be conscripted, either that or they have some sort of personal issue that needs to be dealt with before we continue on to the city," I responded with a nod, which was when about Relinna looked over to where the red haired man and I were staring at.

"Hmm? What's happening? Oh, over there? Yeah, she appears to be in a tight spot down there. Oooohhhh, looks like they've gone into the house now – probably going to force her to come out here, _if_ she's going to be conscripted into the army. That's probably what's happening," Relinna informed the two of us as we continued to glance out the bus window.

Suddenly the situation outside started to appear reminiscent to what I went through earlier in the day. There was a loud outburst of angry shouting, followed by a door being slammed, then a couple of minutes later we all watched as the sergeant and corporal walked on either side of a tall woman with spiky short platinum-silver hair and glaring blood-red eyes, a black jacket with fur lining around the shoulders and red and gold lining, black pants and boots. Fancy to say the least. The silver haired woman was carrying a backpack in her hands and, from what I could see, she had a really aggressive look on her face – could not blame her to be perfectly fair.

We could not help but glance at the young woman as she was forced onto the bus by the sergeant with a forceful shove and directed to find an empty seat, if one could be found. Fortunately for her, although perhaps not for us, the closest available seat was next to Roderius. I glanced away quickly after my eyes met with the silver haired woman's glaring gaze and isntead focused on the seat in front of Relinna, meanwhile the newcomer unhappily sat down behind me next to the nervous redhead and dropped her bag onto the ground. The bus soon took off a few seconds later, our destination was towards the city, which was already coming into our view.

Still, credit where it was due, Relinna was able to muster the courage to even speak to the silver haired woman while the rest of us would not even dare look at her without receiving a glare – at least I think it was a glare, was hard to tell since I was to find out that she always looked like that. "So, um, hey th-there. What's your name? W-Want to play a game of guess the card?" our blonde haired companion asked nervously with a smile.

"Not interested," the silver haired woman replied coldly, her eyes never meeting with Relinna's. Oh well, it was worth a shot at least. It was a pity for Roderius though, considering he had to sit next to her.

Relinna shrugged and went back to her card shuffling while I gazed at her handiwork, meanwhile I noticed through some quick glances I threw in our redhead companion's view that he was continuously looking out the window and glancing back at the silver haired woman from time to time. Curious, but overall I did nto find it to be too interesting to wonder about. He was probably nervous for all I knew, which was the more likely conclusion. Soon enough though, the cherpy blonde woman was ready.

"Alright alright alright, we're ready to go," Relinna said with a grin as she finished shuffling the cards around in her hands. She laid the deck carefully next to her and grabbed three cards off the top, then proceeded to show it to us. Roderius and I saw a queen of spades, three of hearts and nine of clubs. Our chirpy card dealer took the three cards away after a couple of seconds, then started to quickly move them around on her right leg – would have been better on a table to be perfectly honest, considering she dropped one of the cards twice.

It took about a minute or two before Relinna was satisfied before spreading the three cards apart, then she looked back at us with wide eyes filled with joy. It was odd, no, more than that – it was just weird. "Alright folks, place ya bets," she said to the two of us unexpectadly.

I looked over to our red haired companion, who raised an eyebrow with sneer contempt. "You a gambler or something? Can't stand gamblers. I'm fine with just an average game, but not something with actual stakes in it."

Relinna seemed a little surprised with this, judging from how she looked at the young man. "Really? Oh, uh, yeah, guess I'm kinda like a gambler. Why don't you like gambling?"

"B-Because, um... W-Well... urgh, I just hate loosing. Hell, I'd probably lose a b-battle of wits with a stuffed iguana if there were bets on it," the redhead mumbled, which I only just managed to hear. I let out a slight chuckle, finding it both mildly amusing and yet also weird how he could put himself down like that, while Relinna appeared oblivious. Obviously she had not heard him well enough.

I whispered what Roderius had mumbled to her, which then caused our gambling companion to break out in a fit of giggles. "Heheheh~ All right then, we can drop the bets if you want, Richy. Now then, what's this card here?"

The two of us were unable to answer the question, considering our attention had been distracted temporarily by our recent banter. Roderius seemed to find it almost annoying while I found it to be less than that – just plain dull. However, an answer eventually came, but not from either of us, nor from Relinna. "Three of hearts," was the stern reply.

The response, surprisingly, came form the one person who made it very clear she did not want anything to do with us: the silver haired woman sitting next to our red haired, anti-gambling companion. The answer, as it turned out, was correct. Introductions soon followed once more, this time being more readily received than before. "Fine then, you three can call me S-Sha," she informed us after Relinna gave her our names.

"S-Sha? That's a weird name. Is that a nickname or something?" I asked with a hint of curiosity in my voice. I found nicknames intriguing, since I considered that nicknames were only given between friends and hinted at close friendships. From what I've seen so far here, though, just kind of contradicted my line of thinking.

"Mhmm, I suppose it is. I go by it though." The silver haired woman shrugged, not finding the conversation to be all that interesting no doubt. Then she started to stare at me, kind of weirdly too. Noticing my creep out expression, which I saved for people who stared at me for too long, S-Sha sighed and backed up a little into her seat. "I apologise, but I could not help but find your eye interesting."

"Huh? Which eye?" I asked, surprised where the conversation was now heading.

"Your red eye. It isn't everyday I get to meet another person with red eyes, or in this case _a_ red eye. I was the only one in Springvale to have red eyes, so it's nice to see others with it as well," S-Sha explained cooly. It looked as if she was somewhat relieved.

I heard Relinna hum to herself for a few seconds before speaking up. "Yeah, it's kinda weird though. I mean, red eyes aren't common in Leanbox, same goes for any shade of purple hair and eyes, and even black hair too. It looks pretty cool though."

"You think so?" I asked, bewildered with what she had said. I never really found it to be all that cool, just normal. It was not like I was some super hero or a powerful main character in an anime or manga, although it would have been cool to have something like that.

S-Sha, Relinna and even Roderius nodded their heads in agreement. I really could not see the coolness in it to be honest, it was just something that I found normal, if a bit perplexing. At the very rate, the game continued on, and I learned a few more things that I did not ask for, nor wanted to know about. Minor things really, but just weird if anything. S-Sha appeared to have a second personality judging from how differently she spoke from time to time and the fact that she called herself E-Sha, Relinna was most likely a pervert towards both genders from what I gathered, and Roderius could be rather snarky when he felt like unleashing his hidden wit that he had hiding behind his nervousness.

The ride out of Springvale and back out onto the highway towards the capital was rather quite and, in a way, nerve-wracking, minus the banter with Roderius, Relinna and even S-Sha. The bus was mostly silent, save for a few occupants who mumbled to each other about this and that in hushed tones, and then of course there was the bantering between the sergeant and the corporal up at the front, though I could hardly hear what they were saying. A part of me wishes I knew what they were talking, since it could have been some vital information regarding where we were going, then again I probably would not have liked what they had to say so it was for the best I did not know.

If I had to summarise it overall I would say it was just really depressing, not just what was in the bus but also my state of mind. Here I was in a bus filled with utter strangers, some of whom already I thought of as weirder than the average person, uptight soldiers, an overly perky perverted shopping attended with a gambling addiction, a patriotic yet nervous man with some snarky wit to him and a grumpy woman who looked as if she liked to dress up in outlandish clothes and had schizophrenia. Still, I suppose it could have been worse – no one seemed to be a criminal at least.

The closer we got to the capital city the more signs of civilisation we saw, most notably all the various poster ads of cars that ran on some sort of energy, fizzy drinks in glass bottles with bottle cap tops, some commercials for various companies and posters with anti Planeptune, Lastation and Lowee propaganda, there was even a poster warning people about spies. All interesting stuff for some people no doubt, but it bored my mind completely, at some point I thought I was going to die due to pure boredom. It felt like it had been days since the bus had left my home - no, it felt like years - and the closer we got to the capital city the more depressed I became, knowing that there was little chance I would see my mother again, or my father for that matter; he was rarely in my life these days anyway for some bizarre reason.

After a further while of waiting, talking and arguing, we finally entered the capital city of the Land of Green Pastures: Leanbox City. I had never seen such a place before, and at the time I doubted I would ever see something like it again. The city was, in a sense, green and white, with semi tall buildings and and architecture that appeared utterly unique, almost appearing as if out of some ancient, feudal past but mixed with modern things with a large flair of showmanship. As the bus continued on its merry way through the city I spotted a tall, white obelisk towards the north, and behind it was none other than the Basilicom itself in all its splendid, authoritative glory - I still wonder if that is even a good thing.

From what I could remember of my mother's ramblings, there were several museums on either side of a large, long, rectangular pool of water. These museums were filled with old technology from a bygone age, which also included a prototype for the world's first space technology that was never launched, some old weapons; a documentation of the founding of Leanbox; some robots that had been captured from Lastation and Planeptune; and even a museum filled with old games, consoles and the history surrounding it all. The latter was the one place in this city that I desperately wanted to visit, maybe in my spare time, if I was to get any though.

But my silent view of the city was interrupted by Relinna, who had noticed something that none of us apparently had. "Hey, aren't the army training grounds usually up north near all those weird forts? If so then why're we going this way?"

"Yeah, we are going the wrong way," S-Sha muttered, her gaze directed towards where Relinna was pointing towards. "Sergeant, we're going the wrong way."

The orange haired, grumpy sergeant turned back to face the woman with a tone that highly matched her expression. "Keep quiet and remain in your seat, recruit! The military compound we're heading for is to the east, not to the north-west or further up north by Fort Constantine. Now listen up everyone, and listen good. Once we get to our destination be prepared to do exactly as I say, no exceptions. Once we get there you are soldiers, and you will respect your superiors, so don't go getting all punk on us. Now get ready, we'll be at the location soon enough, then you will receive your initial orders."

I looked over at Relinna, who gazed at Roderius who in turn looked over at S-Sha, who simply looked back at me, to which I then took a glance at the young woman for a few seconds. It sounded as things were going from bad to worse for us. It took a little longer for the bus to drive through Leanbox City until it had reached the eastern green field outskirts, where our training camp was located. The bus stopped out the front of the base, which was simply a large fenced off area with barbed wire all over the place, soldiers were all over the place with guns in their hands, their expressions stern. The highly defended and fenced camp was surrounded by a small forest to the north-east, a large lake to the south and open fields of green grass pastures everywhere else, the capital city was close by to the west.

Waiting for us was what looked like in my eyes a very snobby officer, most likely a captain due to all of the fancy medals and badges on the upper left side of her grey shirt, if it was a shirt at all. It looked more to be some sort of shirt-like piece of clothing, except coat-like with an actual large, grey and green overcoat that stretched down to the officer's knees and it also had a large collar. The strange, grey and green clothed coloured officer had a grim expression, emerald green eyes, light blue hair and what looked like a long scar that ran across her left cheek. She appeared to be an intimidating person, and when our eyes locked together for a few seconds I felt only a cold dread shiver up my spine.

Relinna noticed my sudden shiver as the sergeant began to bark orders at people, telling them to get out of the bus and line up in an orderly fashion. The blonde woman shook me gently by the shoulder to gain my attention just before we started to move out. "Hey, you feeling okay? Got a touch of the bad nerves again?" she asked me with a hint of concern in her tone.

"Y-Yeah, I think I am," I responded back, albeit a bit nervously. "It's just that captain down there, we locked eyes for a brief moment and I got this cold feeling running through my spine. I've got a bad feeling about her. It's like… I don't know, it just feels like you want to be in a separate room from her whenever in a confined space."

"Hmm, I think you're right about that, Vilelvia. She doesn't look all that impressed, nor welcoming; even I'm not completely like that," S-Sha said to me as we gathered out bags and began to move down the bus in a single file before walking on solid ground outside the long, green vehicle.

"I guess she's kind of cute though. Kind of. In her own way," Roderius mumbled, although whether he actually meant to blurt that out or was simlpy tlaking to himself I never knew. Nonetheless, he looked mighty embarrassed about that.

"You're pretty damn weird," was all I could respond with in a whispered tone while being forced to get off my seat.

As soon as we had all emerged from the bus and lined up in front of it, the sergeant and corporal marched over to the captain and saluted her. "All new recruits ready to report, ma'am!" the cheerful corporal informed the cold eyed officer. "Or is it sir? I never get it right."

The captain sighed and shook her head, from what I could tell it seemed that this happened on a regular basis. "Corporal Lavistina, we've been over this again and again. Either is fine by me, just don't make a scene in front of the new soldiers. Got it? I hope so, for your sake. Now move it, now, and no stuff ups either."

I heard the corporal gulp audibly, which scared me a little when it came this captain. Still, there was room for a bit of optimism. Maybe she was not as bad as he though. Then again, I've been wrong about a whole lot of things. As the corporal back away, rubbing the back of her neck while chuckling nervously to herself, the captain stared at every one of us new conscripts. It felt as if she was glaring into our very souls, as if she was judging our very existence. Eventually she let out a grunt of dissatisfaction and marched off into the camp, leaving us with a sense of dread in our hearts, even the sergeant appeared to have been affected by it as well. Soon afterwards the grumpy sergeant looked at us and grumbled something to herself before leading us into the training camp.

I was not able to see much of the camp when we first entered, but from a first impression it sure was huge. There were several wooden shacks to the left and right of the entry path, no doubt filled with guards to watch over the entrance, then there was what appeared to be some sort of exercise field, judging from all the people jumping up and down as well as doing push ups, and then there were what I guessed were barracks. As we marched over towards the barracks I looked over to my left to see other conscripts in military uniform talking together, a few of their gazes met mine and the others, their expressions filled with pity. Those ones must have been forcibly conscripted like most of us. Damn, life was just going to get a whole lot worse for us all.

Eventually we were led to what appeared to be the barracks, at least a part of it anyway. The barracks looked more like a few rows of neat shacks than anything else; well, guess it is better than nothing. Suddenly the sergeant stopped us in our tracks and stared at us in her usual grumpy way. "Alright soldiers, listen up. These will be your homes for a long time, so you lot better get used to it now. It may not look like a proper barracks, but this is all the higher ups could get set up in a short amount of time. Females and males are to be separated, males over to my left and females over to my right and behind me. Get yourself acquainted with your rooms for what's left of the day, but be ready for a call to dinner when the horn is blasted."

The sergeant beckoned for the cheery corporal to follow her to goddess knows where, leaving us several hours until dinner time to work out which dorm we were going to live in. I watched as Roderius nodded a 'goodbye' to us before he wandered off in the dorm across the first path opposite the one me, Relinna, S-Sha and three other women were staring at with abject disdain. But we forced ourselves to accept the inevitable, and thus we entered our new home for the unforeseeable future.

It was clean, to say the least. Dull, but ultimately clean and healthy to live in, just not homely enough. The walls were a dark shade of green, the floor was white, there were two windows on either side of the main central room and then there were two smaller rooms just further up, and on a closer inspection it appeared that we had to share these two rooms - three in each one.. As me, Relinna, Sh-Sha and three other women walked through the dorm, looking at the two small rooms that were available to sleep in, I noticed that there was a book on the brown, wooden table. I walked over to it and read the title.

"The Leanboxian Bible? Huh, I thought they stopped printing copies like this out," I muttered to myself. I then opened the Leanboxian Bible up to a random page and began to read a section of it to myself. "Revelation 21:6. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto them that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life, freely. Heh, what weird things to put in a religious book from a time before Lady Green Heart. Still, I've got a feeling that someone in the future might like this verse a lot."

I chuckled to myself, hoping that I did not set in motion some sort of future plot. Heh, silly meta stuff – too outlandish for me though. _Well, time to get set up and be prepared for dinner. I bet it's gonna be terrible, just some awful rations mixed together in some stew to make it last longer. Eh, it can't be that bad. Maybe. Wonder what's going to happen tomorrow?_

* * *

 **A/N: Well this took too long to complete, way too long. Lost count actually. Motivation is still at an all-time low, but I've managed to make some advancements here and there when I have the time to do so. Because of this I still don't have a timetable, even if I did it would inevitably change - best if I don't have one for now. Well I don't have much to say, other than I hope you had an enjoyable read and have a good day if you can. Until next time.  
**


End file.
